Like sour milk, sour email is just something that doesn't sit right in your stomach. Sour email is all about those things you see every day in your email inbox that need to be thrown out!

I think as marketers we can do better!

So here's my take on calling out all you sour e-mailers to do better and some best practices on how to do so.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

EMAIL BENCHMARKING - Anatomy of an Email Inbox - 9-19-2017

Email Benchmarks

I love email marketing and that's why I write this blog. It is one of the most powerful and compelling tactics we have in our toolkit as marketers and for the most part we do a SOUR job of leveraging it to our and our prospect and customers benefit.Recently I saw a report from Digital Doughnut on Email Benchmarking and I thought it was worthy of a conversation. This report was based on a survey of 1,500 marketers, so it is self-reported data on what people are doing, what the trends are and how satisfied they are with their providers.Here's what I think are the salient insights.1. We are SLOW learners. The first "blast" email was sent in 1978. Yet today, only 30% of email marketers consider themselves "leaders." Only 9% rate themselves as extremely mature!

2. We are still weak at executing personalization. I've written about this before and did another look at my inbox this week. Out of 155 emails only 5 companies used my first name in the subject line. My bank didn't even use my name! I'm pretty sure they know it! SOUR.

The good news is that as marketers we recognize the need to be more personalized - this is the top trend according to this study. It just saddens me that we are so slow to embrace this and even though it is considered a trend, only 26% of respondents rank it as most important.

The One-To-One Future was written by Peppers and Rogers in 1993! That's almost 25 years ago.

Now I know that was visionary in its time and we really didn't have the database and technological capabilities to be as personalized as we can today. Now, however, there is no excuse. Even the most basic ESPs allow you to do some level of personalization. We can and should be much better.

3. What do you need to know to be better? I have spoken and written about all of this in past posts and you can find detailed specifics and best practices by reviewing these. Now is the time to become a leader and insure you are executing all of the below at the highest level.

One note of caution on the first bullet - while I agree that you should be sending more emails on a regular basis, that doesn't mean more to everyone. Be sure that the volume of emails is increased only if using personalization, triggering and relevant communication. Your emails should include content that is delivered at the right time and is truly based on what your prospect or customer needs at that point in their customer journey, not what you want. If you deliver on their needs you will always win over the long term in your customers minds and hearts and for your business.